


Cloudwalker: Beginnings

by Cyanogynist



Series: Cloudwalker [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Camp Nanowrimo, Fantasy, Gen, Modern Era, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 11:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18570412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyanogynist/pseuds/Cyanogynist
Summary: Cloudwalker: Beginnings, a Camp NaNoWriMo project, focuses on the early days of both Martin Deckard and the supernatural, throughout the years, from when he first found out about it, leading up to when his city was lifted into the clouds of an unknown realm.A DISCLAIMER: I now consider this version of Cloudwalker outdated. New works, connected to this newer version, will be coming shortly.





	Cloudwalker: Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> So, hey. You're reading the beginning of... this thing, inspired and shaped by everything I've encountered throughout my life. I'd like to thank the Homestuck team, the Destroy the Godmodder community, the Fortnite: Battle Royale team, the various Discord servers I've went to, the NaNoWriMo team, and everything and everyone else that has inspired me, that I couldn't remember to put here. So, yeah. Welcome to the in-between. Welcome to Cloudwalker.

It was a warm and welcoming summer. I woke up to a warm air, a blue sky, and a shining sun. Everything was right with the world. I went through the routine for the morning: greetings, breakfast, hygiene, and then everything broke away from there. I dressed myself in my favorite casual gear, picked up a backpack, and then rode off onto my bike. It didn’t matter where’d I end up, just that it was freeing, in a way. The wind in my face, the landscape blurring past me. The suburbs, the grand city visible from the horizon, both becoming further and further from me. I rode towards the future, towards the one moment that would slowly change everything.

I continued riding into the forest, along the pathway of leaves, when I saw a mysterious blue light, coming from within the trees. Driven by my curiosity, I went towards it. A closer look showed me a small pond, and a light blue crack in the ground beneath its waters. A mist, painted with a spectrum of light colors, surrounded it. I sat down, staring at the light shining from beneath the water. It felt like a campfire, lighting the night in an otherwise unwelcoming woods. I touched the water, and as the waves rippled across its surface, images flickered on it. I smiled, as I pulled my sketchpad from my bag, and drew up what I referred to then as a skyscape, inspired by the fleeting reflections in the water. It was beautiful, as the image in the water was.

I went back on my bike, and rode back to my house. It was a few hours after noon. The air still felt warmer, although a bit less than usual. I entered my house, greeted by my family, and a delicious lunch. I showed them the sketch of the skyscape, and they said that they were proud of me. All in all, the rest of the day, and the remainder of the next two years, was one like any other, with nothing out of the ordinary, other than that day, in the forest, at the lake.

When I was thirteen years old, not much had changed. My family still lived in the suburbs, I was still an introvert and a daydreamer, and I still went to the same school, but I had more friends, and I was slightly taller and wiser. This was still the world as I knew it. Well, as I had previously known it.

Aleksei Curtis, Rosalie Chambers, and Trevor Cooper were the second closest thing to family I had at school. I had other friends, but those three were the closest from among them. They were also the first other people I took to see the rift. It was the last day of school of that year, so we did something special.

First, we had my mother drive us to some fast food place. You couldn’t go wrong with it, and our excitement for summer made us hungry anyway. Next, we went to the arcade, as children our age usually did. We were taken all around the city, for one grand day of celebration. A celebration of release, a celebration of advancement, a celebration of us.

Our final destination was one that I chose. The cracked ground in the forest. It was special, in a way. It was special to me. The images that flickered on its surface were magical, almost straight out of my imagination. A symbol of imagination and fantasy, etched onto the real, natural world. The thought warms my heart as we ride off into the forest, and the warm, golden light of the late afternoon sun radiated upon us.

We stopped at the lake, and it was still the misty, glistening lake that I visited last year. As I expected, and hoped, they were awestruck by the beauty of the place. “This is so cool!” Trevor exclaimed. No one else said anything, but their bewildered stares and the innocent smiles on their faces revealed more than enough. Aleksei reached deeply into it, touching the glowing crack in the earth, then he pulled it out, as the water slowly turned into some sort of substance, a small pool of softly-lit space and shimmering stars. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t water. It was indeed cool to look at, though.

We went back to the suburbs after the spectacle at the pond. It wasn’t much, but it was a refreshing experience. We ended up back in my house, where my family had prepared a fantastic dinner. A cake of many flavors and decorations. A grand, ornate spire of confectionaries driven through the sky above the dining table. A glorious monument to a glorious milestone in our lives.

When I slept that night, something changed. In my dream that day, I was floating in a field of stars, lost in space, with a mix of ancient and futuristic structures, floating within my sight. I swam through the void, and entered a ruined building. I was met with a large room, stocked with bookshelves, research tools, and notes, much like a library, or a lab. Maybe a combination of the two. In the middle of the room was a pedestal, holding a smooth, black disc. I took a closer look, and part of it was lit up, glowing with a bright, futuristic pattern. I picked it up.

I was ready to get out, disc in hand, when a silhouette-like figure blocked the way. It was nearly completely black, with a bright purple aura around it, the same color on a mark going all the way around its neck, and a crown of flowers, resting on its head. I stepped back, nearly frozen in shock and fear. I carefully placed the disc back on the table. Still driven by fear, I ran the other way as fast as I could, flinging myself into a doorway, to a place that clearly didn’t belong with the ruins I just left. I found myself in a room of glass, suspended in what looked and felt like the sky of the Earth.

As I looked around, the color of the sky shifted to a soft, glorious golden, with purples and such mixed into it. Images were flickering onto the glass. Even now, I remember a few of them. A graceful, knightly woman, wings of light floating around her back, holding her lover in a soft embrace. A chunk of land, floating in the sky, severed from the rest of the world, yet it holds a grand, thriving city. A door, leading to nothing, spiralling off into a new world. This wasn’t the Earth I grew up in. This was something else entirely. Before I could really take a good look, the sky went black, and then a radiant, all-consuming white, and then I woke up.

I stared at my hands, checking if I was still dreaming. Nothing was out of the ordinary, except a pattern of the fissure, centered onto the palm of my hand. It glowed a calm light blue, much like the pond did. I looked around, still checking if I was truly awake. I noticed a glowing light coming from my backpack, and then I found a pure black disc, marked with glowing patterns, hidden in it. This disc felt familiar, I thought. I ignored it, put it on the empty frame hanging above my bed, and went back to sleep.

When I was fourteen years old, I began to take a small interest in the supernatural, and it was all thanks to a little story that went on the news. It was a calm, cloudy day, much like any other, and I was listening to the radio, pen in hand, idly pointed at the paper. “A stray group of hikers has gone missing,” said a voice from the radio. They talked about who they were, why they were there, and other personal details. The last place the hikers went, they said, was a lake, with a massive, glowing rift beneath it. One minute, according to the leader, they were looking away from the lake, scouting its surroundings, and the next thing they knew, the rest of the group had disappeared, without a trace.

They were reassured that the team probably just got lost, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t the case, that it was something more than simply being lost in the woods. When I looked back at the paper, there was an elaborate crack sketched upon it, centered at the point where my pen touched it. It was a spider web of damage, almost as if the paper was a part of a wall, struck by a precise, forceful impact. “Did I really do this while I was zoning out to the news?” I asked myself internally. I accepted this, as it made sense.

Later in the day, as I went on the Internet, I began my research on the topic of glowing blue cracks in bodies of water, and I was met with a ton of results, with a lot of variety between them. From possible scientific explanations being pitched to the masses, to people just admiring how beautiful the glowing fissure was, all the way to theories connecting them to what would usually be written off as fantasy, there were many points of view about this anomaly. I put my hat into the ring, by asking a question in one of the popular threads on the fissures.

MartinTheDreamer: Okay, tell me what’s really going on with these glowing fissures.

As expected, the greater discussion continued on, seemingly ignoring me. Thankfully, there were a few responses directed at my inquiry. I readied myself for the first one.

Natalie456: They’re likely the homes to a species of bioluminescent fish or material.  
MartinTheDreamer: ...I don’t think so. And I’ve been to one of the rifts’ locations.  
MartinTheDreamer: The water… turned into outer space or something.  
MartinTheDreamer: It turned into space! How do you explain that? No, seriously, how do you explain it?  
Natalie456: It was probably just reflecting the sky.  
MartinTheDreamer: That would make sense, if I was there in the evening, where the sky is black and starry. Unfortunately, it did the space thing in the afternoon. The afternoon.  
MartinTheDreamer: To make matters weirder, the space-y-ness spread slowly across the water when someone touched it, like a drop of food coloring, er, coloring a glass of water.  
MartinTheDreamer: I don’t think science can explain that kind of stuff. No offense.  
Natalie456: That’s weird. And don’t worry, none taken.

On to the second one.

SolsticeUndying: i think it’s magic! :D  
MartinTheDreamer: Maybe. I mean, I saw it turn into outer space, and I imagine that my friends did too.  
SolsticeUndying: maybe it’s a space portal thing! :D   
MartinTheDreamer: Probably. Then again, probably not. Maybe one of the people I brought with me to the rift put some sort of glittery space dye into the water.  
MartinTheDreamer: It was pretty cool to watch either way.  
SolsticeUndying: yeah, i guess it was. :)  
SolsticeUndying: so, where would the space portal pool lead to? :/   
MartinTheDreamer: I don’t know. Probably space, the very thing it looks like.  
SolsticeUndying: makes sense. :)

I wasn’t sure about anything to do with the rifts myself. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. Then again, isn’t a big part of life just like that? I step away from the computer, and fall into my bed. Life has gone on, life is going on, and life shall go on, and I’m going to go along for the ride, and maybe make sense of it.

When I was fifteen years old, everything was normal, except for one dream. I was back at the room of glass, and the reflections on its walls. A disc was there, placed on the floor, more than half of it adorned in pretty lights and circuitboard marks. As I picked it up, it broke, and melted, leaving a stain of color on the floor. The paint-like mark slowly crept upon the glass, until it formed a square of pure, gleaming white. I stepped on it, and I found myself falling, outside the room, in the sky. I did what any rational human being would do in a situation like this. I screamed, incessantly, as I fell for what felt like forever, until I woke up in a cold sweat.

I felt strangely inspired. I grabbed my sketchbook, got my pen, and began drawing up something. My hand drifted the pen freely across the canvas, quietly, as to not wake up anyone else. I felt that i was in the zone. When I was done, I was left with an image of the disc, three fourths of the way filled up with light. I hanged it up the wall, covering the disc I already had, and went back to sleep.

When I was sixteen years old, a lot had changed. We moved, in order to be closer to a nice and prestigious high school near the city. It was new, unusual, and a bit scary, but in my heart I felt that I could get through it. That was my approach to everything, and this was no different. It was the first day, so the teachers were pretty much just introducing themselves, and having the students do the same. Not much going on. I looked out the window, and saw a familiar glow in the distance, behind the fence. I made a mental note to visit it after class was over.

As the final bell rang, I grabbed my bag, and calmly walked out of the room. I told my parents that I wanted to explore the place a bit more before we went home. They let me do so. A walk in nature and a breath of fresh air is good for the soul, after all. I climbed the fence, and landed on the other side. I noticed that this time, the glow wasn’t coming from one place. There was a pathway leading further into the woods, outlined with dotted lines of glowing blue lights.

I stepped forward slowly, beginning to follow the path. It led me to a stone door, with various markings etched onto its surface, set within an ornate, ancient door frame. It was lightly shrouded in a glistening mist that felt… familiar. It didn’t seem to lead anywhere, as the door stood by itself, with no building around it. I pushed on the door. The door’s markings cycled through a lightened spectrum of color, split itself across its lines, and opened to a wall of glass. Great, I thought. All that setup and excitement for nothing. If it was a joke, I appreciated the effort put into it, although it wasn’t a very funny one. Then, the glass cracked.

The glass surface gave way to a vivid, starry void, cycling through every color. Now this was more like it, I thought. Images faded in and out of it. I put my bag on the ground, and stepped back slowly. I took the disc out of the bag, as I had a feeling that I’d need it. I reached into the door, and the mark on my hand glowed in harmony with the void. I stepped in, and ended up on a glassy platform, floating in what seemed like outer space. I looked around me, around the stage. There was nothing but a floor of glass, extending into what looked like infinity. I took a step forward, and the glass lit up along its cracks, revealing a gallery of door frames, through which I saw unfamiliar things. Unfamiliar places, unfamiliar people, unfamiliar rules, unfamiliar worlds. These were portals.

Driven by curiosity, I started walking towards nowhere in particular, making up the journey as I go. Eventually, I stopped, stumbling upon a particular portal. It showed trees among a starry night sky. From the door, I heard the chirps of birds and the flow of the wind. It felt… familiar. As I drifted into the door, I was greeted with the calm of cold water on my skin.

I floated up, and found myself in a forest, swimming in a small body of water within it. I looked around, and noticed that the stuff I was swimming in looked like outer space. “Could it be?” I thought. “Was this the forest?” I looked around, and got up from the lake. I walked past a few floating stones, and then stopped in my tracks as I saw a small fox, glowing with a light blue. When it left, I continued on, heading towards nowhere in particular, and as I left the forest, I examined the scene in front of me. This was the town we used to live in. So that was the forest I used to go to. I remembered something important: I needed to go back. My family was waiting for me.

I rushed back into the forest, stepped into the pond, and when I sank into it, I was met with the field of stars once again. I ran past various doors, until I returned to the door from where I first discovered this place. I looked up, and saw that not much time has passed. The sun was still fairly visible and bright. I put on my backpack, and went to mom’s car. Mom asked me what I did, and I said that I was exploring the place, making myself familiar with its inner workings and hallways and stuff. My parents accepted this, and said nothing else about it during the ride back home. After all, I wasn’t lying.

We rode back to our new, somewhat nicer house, almost wordlessly, listening to the music playing from the radio. As I looked out of the window, I noticed something new. The clouds were… different. At least, from the ones that I saw before. They slowly faded into different light, vibrant pastel-esque colors. The rain they’ve brought had shone with the same vivid palette. I thought that this thing was an aurora, like those localized entirely near the poles, but somehow they were here. Little did I know that they would be something more. Something cooler. Something grand. Something bigger than me. Something bigger than us. Something that would change the world as we knew it.

When I was seventeen years old, I had come a long way ever since my first encounter with the world of magic, back at the forest, with the rift in the pond. Ever since then, I had discovered new things about it: I saw it produce a beautiful flower that I don’t think anyone had ever seen before, and I discovered a network of portals to some sort of alternate dimension. I felt like fantasy was reality this whole time, right under our noses. Little did I know that something greater was yet to come.

I sat down in my bed, the disc held in a frame hanged above it. I looked at it, and found that it was nearly completely covered in cryptic inscriptions and futuristic markings. I picked up my laptop, and turned it on. Ah, the Internet. An entire virtual world within our own, with its own realms, its own people, its own rules, and much, much more. It wasn’t magical, and I couldn’t directly live in it, but it’ll have to do. As I reminisced about the good memories that the Internet gave me, I launched up a little-known chat client called Prisma. 

Prisma was a chat client as creative and artistic as those that used it. Its core tenet was creativity and expression, which manifested in its customization. Customization of its appearance, its functions, the people you talked to with it, and other facets that I didn’t know. It was like a blank canvas, taking the form of a chat client. The nigh-infinite possibilities of things such as this appealed to me, among many, many other people. Probably tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, probably more.

My client was reminiscent of an old-school computer terminal: a dark background with light neon blue text. I set it to the server that I used the most. A creatives’ guild of sorts. The server populated by quite a lot of people, some of which were my closest Internet friends. The one where we would coordinate meetings in games and stuff, and talk about whatever we wanted, and share funny pictures, and anything else we wanted. A virtual land of our own.

I smiled in reminiscence as I typed a short greeting to the group. I, MartinTheDreamer, was then greeted by a few of those friends. Sunray39, TobiasMBrooke, and Crescent greeted me back, although a lot more people were online. As usual, we talked about an assortment of random topics, coordinated a few meetings, and listened to music through the community audio channel. Then, I dropped what even I thought was a weird question.

MartinTheDreamer: Are you guys seeing these cool pastel rainbow clouds in the sky?

An indicator showed up. Specifically, the indicator that multiple people were currently preparing their messages. Most of the responses were that they didn’t see such a thing. Huh, that’s odd. I looked back out the window, at the sky, the clouds still there. Then I looked at my screen in confusion. It was there, wasn’t it? I was seeing it with my own eyes! But then…   
  
virtuos_renegade: yes  
*Solaria*: yep!   
Crescent: Yes, I am.   
Greg3048: yeah they’re cool  
MartinTheDreamer: Huh, that’s weird.

It felt good to see these reactions. Partly because it felt good to see my suspicions confirmed. Partly because it felt good to know that someone else is appreciating these beautiful clouds. Or so it goes.

MartinTheDreamer: What’s causing it?   
Cynder005: uh i don’t know   
Cynder005: maybe it’s like the aurora borealis or something  
Cynder005: the ones localized entirely within the north pole or something   
MartinTheDreamer: I think so too. Any other theories?   
MartinTheDreamer: Like, you know, magic?  
MartinTheDreamer: Just curious, I guess.  
</>: I… don’t believe in that kinda stuff.  
MartinTheDreamer: It’s just nice to imagine.

It began to rain, as it would on any normal day. This time, however, something was different. The rain cycled through every color I knew, and every color I didn’t, as the clouds did, as the mist did. Something was different. Something big was going to begin. I could feel it.

Indeed, it did. A few small things floated in the air. Light began shining from the cracks in the sidewalks on the nearby streets. The rain froze in mid-air, still glistening with its eternally-changing colors. Something big was going to happen, and I wasn’t ready.

MartinTheDreamer: Guys, what’s happening? I’m kinda scared.   
  
I sent them a link to a live recording from my phone, capturing everything I saw, looking from outside my window. The suspended rain, the light from beneath, I saw it all, so I assumed that it would too, and that soon, they would, too.

Laughing_crying_emoji: It’s… just your street, but with some more glowy light stuff.  
Laughing_crying_emoji: Cool, but not that special.  
Crescent: I have to agree.

Was I hallucinating? That would certainly explain why they didn’t see it. I went out into the open, to take a closer look. A lot of people didn’t even notice all this. The few that did were standing on the cracks in the sidewalk, looking around what was possibly a completely different world, and then standing still, possibly either stunned in admiration, or frozen in fear. So I wasn’t going crazy. That’s good.

I climbed up the rusty stairs on the side of a nearby building, and then I noticed that the anomalies, the cracks, the frozen rain, they continued on for as long as I could see. This was something big, and I wasn’t ready.

MartinTheDreamer: I have an idea.   
MartinTheDreamer: If you see that glowy light stuff, touch it. Touch it and you’ll see what I’m seeing.   
MartinTheDreamer: Trust me on this one.   
MartinTheDreamer: Really. No, I’m not on drugs, if anyone of you asks.

The sky darkened, and a crack appeared in the sky, light shining through it. The rain began to fall again, but the puddles showed a beautiful, cosmic void instead of the normal world it would have reflected. I didn’t know what was happening. It was at this moment that I thought that I may have gotten more than I bargained for, and that if I survived, this would make a great story for me to tell to the creatives’ guild. Well, what would be left of them, anyway.

As I went back down the old, creaky stairway, I noticed something different. I was floating, as did the pencils in my room. The world was breaking more by the second, both figuratively and literally, I thought. The phone shook with an alert, and I snapped back into attention. The chat had begun to respond.   


Ouch_oof_owie_my_emotions: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS  
Ouch_oof_owie_my_emotions: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING  
MartinTheDreamer: I… I don’t know.  
MartinTheDreamer: I’m kinda scared too.

The cosmic rain on the ground began to evaporate, and a vivid, prismatic mist began to form within the city. The world slowly became brighter, and its colors slowly became lighter. Pieces of buildings broke off into the sky, leaving a silhouette of an intense, glaring white in their place.

Light pierced through the night sky, forming a tear directly above the city, catching everyone’s attention. The light peered through the city, harder and brighter. I closed my eyes, believing that it was only a dream. I took deep breaths, curled up on the sidewalk, and waited for the light to consume everything.

When I began to open my eyes again, I was met with a nearly-blinding light, and I held up my arm to shield myself from it. I slowly adjusted to the glare, and looked around. I was still in the city. The buildings look like they haven’t just been disintegrated a few moments ago. That meant I was still alive, and the city was still standing. Everything was normal, from the looks of it. That was good. I got up, and I took a step in what I felt was a changed world, and another, and another, and another, and another. I’m still here. We’re still here. I continued walking, with an optimistic smile on my face, and then I stepped back once I saw an edge. An edge, leading to nowhere, with a sea of clouds beneath the city, and the sun shining in this new horizon.

Were we floating? We were floating. We were floating, in the sky, and everything was still on for some reason. Was it? I sat down, pulled out my phone, and sure enough, I still had a signal. I wondered how this was possible, when I saw something shoot past the city, through the sky. The red lights and metallic glare of whatever it was led me to believe that it was a satellite. I then looked down at the clouds. They shone with a mixture of the soft, golden glow of the sun, and the glittering, prismatic light that marked the magical and mystical, as I saw before in many places, at many points in my life.

I walked back to the center of the city. I hear a few screams of panic, which I assumed were caused by the revelation that we, and the city, were floating in an unusually-colored sky. Maybe this was only a dream. I returned to my room, and saw that the disc was completely covered in a pure, bright white. I took it out of the frame, and it flew out of my room. I followed it, and it stopped just near the end of the road, the edge of the city. It was floating in the air, and as I reached towards it, it shattered violently, and left a bright paint-like mark on the ground, as if the paint was its blood.

I walked away, not knowing what I expected. Then, I heard the sound of glass shattering, in reverse. A soft glow coming from behind me led me to turn back, and I saw a door frame, standing by itself, like the one I saw near the high school. The nothingness it led to glistened with the grace and greatness of the stars. I looked around, checking if the lights in the city still truly stood. They did. The electric blood of the city still flowed through the wires, even after they were severed from the rest of the world. Normally, this wasn’t possible. This was probably a dream of mine. A grand, vivid dream. Even if it was, it didn’t change the fact that this was a beautiful view, a beautiful world, a beautiful day. I stood still for a bit, appreciating what was in front of me.

I was faced with a choice. I could stay back, in the city, a remnant of the old Earth I lived in for the last seventeen years. I could go into the portal, and explore whatever was beyond the door. I stood in front of the open door, thinking about it. Eventually, I took a step into the door. There seemed to be no floor on the other side. I stepped back. The nothingness glistened like glass, and then it slowly shifted into a cloudy blue sky, a path of light forming on the other side. I stepped into the door again, my foot caught by the barrier. I took another step, still held up by the light. The path looked like it went on for forever. So I followed it. I followed the tightrope of light, over the sky, to a place I didn’t know, but I didn’t care, because it was about the journey, not the destination. The calm and cool breeze blew over me, as I balanced myself over the endless unknown below. Eventually, I was faced with another door, another portal.

I stepped forward, my shoes touching the grass on the other side. In fact, grass was the only thing there seemed to be over there. The only thing interrupting the endless green of the ground was a single tree, with leaves of a darker green than the grass below it, and a single silhouette of a figure sitting under its shade. I approached the tree, and saw that the figure was definitely human-like. As I came closer to them, it became clear that it was wearing a cloak. I walked around them, to see their face, and I saw their mask, a completely white, blank canvas with a pair of holes for their eyes.

Intimidated by the mysterious figure, I let out a stuttery “Hello?” They immediately looked at me, and I was sweating buckets. They held out their hand to me, and I held it back, and we ha a good d handshake. So I guessed they wouldn’t kill me. That’s good. “Who are you?” they asked me. With a nervous, shaky tone, I responded with an “I’m M-Martin.”

“Where did you come from?” they said, sitting down under the shade. I think about it. “Actually, I don’t know.” I joined them beneath the tree, and took a deep breath. “One minute I was talking with my friends over the Internet, the next, my city’s now floating high above the clouds, and I think magic is real now or something. Maybe it always has been, and it just decided to confirm it right now with a grand, ridiculous fanfare.”

They took a moment to think. “It’s one of those rifts, isn’t it?” Maybe it was. “Yeah.” Now what? I prepared to ask a much more important question. “Where are we, anyway?”

They thought about it for another moment. “...welcome to the in-between, Martin.” They stood up, and held out their hand towards me. “You may call me Lukas.”


End file.
